In sharp contrast to what Muammar Qaddafi has called drug addicts and Al Qaeda members, he described the rebel movement as being made up of "well-educated" young people. What's more, said Shammam, a Libyan exile and native of Benghazi, where the rebel government is based, rebels want to implement secular and democratic reforms.

She added that until recently they have “not had any specific information” on the so-called “interim council” largely based in Benghazi. “We are still getting to know those who are leading” the transition, she said.

Another opposition leader, Guma el-Gamaty, who teaches at the University of Westminster in London and has been a Qaddafi opponent for years, said that Libyan youth have lived with “no hope, no jobs, no freedom of thought, no freedom of anything” for so long that when the tide turned in Tunisia and Libya, “they seized the chance to revolt ... but Qaddafi is making that very hard.”